Tivo Mini IR receiver

I just hooked up my Mini and the IR seems very responsive. This Mini I hooked up to my master bedroom TV, which sits inside an armoire. I put the Mini next to the TV base, but slightly behind the TV. The remote works fine for me no matter where I point it in that room. Just for kicks, I pointed it 180 degrees the opposite direction from the Mini (basically at my chin) and it still recognized the commands. I won't be needing any kind of IR extender in that room.

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I noticed that with one of mine when I was testing it out. I had it located behind a speaker and it still had no problem responding to the IR commands.
Although I'm using the Slide remote with it now.

TiVo Customer: hey i have the new mini, but i heard there would be a IR sensor that plugs into the usb port
TiVo Customer: is that true?
Lucas: I do apologize for the inconvenience, the TiVo Mini IR extender has not been released yet.
TiVo Customer: oh
TiVo Customer: do you know when?
Lucas: Currently there is no ETA when the IR extender will be released.
TiVo Customer: kk ty

What's the over/under that it works with the Mini? Is the tech/driver universal? Is TiVo's delay not having the software ready or not having the hardware ready?

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The odds are zero.

1) That dongle is an IrDA serial device which uses completely different modulation and carrier techniques than IR remotes. It can't "see" what is being sent by a TiVo remote.
2) It is a serial USB device, which generally requirers a driver on the host device that downloads its firmware on every launch.
3) All of TiVo's previous USB interface stuff (like the slide remote) had the dongle emulate a keyboard to the TiVo so it did not require any special drivers beyond HID, this thing certainly does not do that.

Maybe it will not... However, According to HDRyder, his Hewlett Packard USB IR receiver works fine. From my understanding, IrDA is just a modern standard for IR communication that allowed new products to use standard protocols.

My Hewlett Packard USB IR receiver works on my Tivo Mini. I have a hunch that all USB IR receivers are created equal and will work as well. I have a Phillips around here somewhere. I'll give it a try as soon as I find it.

3) All of TiVo's previous USB interface stuff (like the slide remote) had the dongle emulate a keyboard to the TiVo so it did not require any special drivers beyond HID, this thing certainly does not do that.

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I do not believe any of TiVo's earlier products ever supported an remote ir dongle. If tivo wanted to use a hardware ir reciever, it would have been easier to use a simple repeater cable with a 3.55mm connection - that they chose to use the USB solution tells me that they wanted a software driven solution.

I am so curious now, if I had a Mini, I would pay the $11 just to see if it worked!

Not really. If you have an IR receiver that looks like a USB HID device (IOW, like a keyboard) it may work if the key maps are reasonable. Otherwise it won't. The linux kernel also has in kernel IR support that makes some dongles look like HID devices provided you build in the drivers, those will work if TiVo builtin support. That is almost certainly how the HP MCE remote kit functions if it does.

None of that applies to an IrDA adapter.

I do not believe any of TiVo's earlier products ever supported an remote ir dongle. If tivo wanted to use a hardware ir reciever, it would have been easier to use a simple repeater cable with a 3.55mm connection - that they chose to use the USB solution tells me that they wanted a software driven solution.

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You are correct, I was discussing the slide remote, not an IR remote. While the slide remote was marketed as a bluetooth device, the TiVo did not see it as such. Rather the bluetooth dongle kept its pairing information with the device emulated a USB keyboard, and it had enough of an internal bluetooth stack to talk to the remote and then emulated being a normal USB keyboard, so the tivo could talk to the remote without needing its own bluetooth driver. This is actually a normal function included with BT host silicon to support preboot keyboard usage on PCs (your BIOS doesn't know about bluetooth, so in order to keep the BT keyboard working the BT adapter pretends it is just a USB keyboard and hides all the BT functionality from the computer until a proper driver is loaded at which point it turns off the USB keyboard emulation and the computer starts talking to the USB keryboard through a full BT stack).

Obviously TiVo can load whatever drivers they want onto the device, so their product may or may not pretend to be a keyboard, but the reason any existing ones work is because of the existing keyboard UI control that was shipped to support the slide.

That has a couple of interesting consequences. It means that if you plug a USB keyboard into a TiVo you can drive the UI with it. It also means anything that pretends to be a keyboard can drive the UI, like a lot of PC oriented remotes that come with their own dongles (but not random IrDA dongles). Hell, you can control a TiVo with a barcode scanner.

Obviously TiVo can load whatever drivers they want onto the device, so their product may or may not pretend to be a keyboard, but the reason any existing ones work is because of the existing keyboard UI control that was shipped to support the slide.

That has a couple of interesting consequences. It means that if you plug a USB keyboard into a TiVo you can drive the UI with it. It also means anything that pretends to be a keyboard can drive the UI, like a lot of PC oriented remotes that come with their own dongles (but not random IrDA dongles). Hell, you can control a TiVo with a barcode scanner.

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I bought a VisionTek CandyBoard for use with my TiVo HD, and it works fine. If it works, it has to be plug-and-play since there's no way to install drivers on a TiVo. I haven't tried it with my Premiere, but it should work. I did read comments online that the similar VisionTek Bluetooth keyboard would not work with a TiVo for some reason.

I was disappointed to find that TiVo has not bothered to define any USB keyboard key combinations to simulate the playback control keys: Play, FF, Rewind, Skip, Replay and Pause. If they would do that, the USB keyboard option would be much more useful. I need it for the times that my TiVo HD decides to stop receiving IR remote commands for a while.